Out of the Dark Read online

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The cop with the incipient black eyes stepped in. “Look, he got the better of us, okay?”

  “And it looks like you caught the worst of it.” Naomi tilted her head back, appraising the nose. “Jesus. At least it’s a clean break.”

  At this the man scowled a little.

  Naomi turned her attention to the veteran cop and the woman. “Seems like you two got off okay.”

  The woman shrugged. “I did get knocked down pretty hard. When Kryzanski was kicked into me.”

  Naomi said, “Lucky you didn’t crack your head.”

  “I think the attacker…” The female cop cleared her throat.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think he cradled my head on the way down.”

  Naomi nodded and then nodded again, unsure what to make of that. “Romantic,” she said. A closer look showed the female officer to have red-rimmed eyes. Naomi decided not to ask about that at the moment. Instead she said, “How ’bout you tell me how this all kicked off.”

  “The guy threatened us,” Kryzanski said.

  “Well,” the woman said, “he didn’t really threaten us. More like he told us what was gonna happen.”

  The cop with the slight facial burn added morosely, “And then it did.”

  Naomi chewed the inside of her cheek. “What did he say precisely?”

  They told her.

  Naomi said, “Huh.”

  They all stared at one another for longer than was comfortable. Though the incident had occurred nearly two hours ago, the cops still looked glazed. Regarding them now, the word that popped into Naomi’s head was “shell-shocked.”

  She lifted her hand to help form her next question but then dropped it. They stared some more. “So he just went ahead and did all that? When you were expecting it?”

  “Well, not exactly like that,” Kryzanski said. “Before he … went … he said … He said the slide on my Glock was out of battery.”

  “Was it?” Naomi asked.

  “No.”

  She grimaced. “Did you check?”

  He hesitated, then gave a faint nod.

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t remember much after that.”

  “Is it fair to assume that’s when the flying-table sequence started?” Naomi asked.

  The female officer said, “I believe that’s fair to say, yes.”

  “What’d he look like?” Naomi asked. “This guy?”

  “Average height, average build,” the female cop said. “Regular features. He had a baseball cap pulled low, so it was hard to tell.”

  “But you three were right there within a few meters of him in a well-lit restaurant.”

  “I don’t know.” The cop shook her head. “He looked like a guy. Like anyone.” She was staring at the floor, still shaking her head. “He looked like anyone.”

  One of the forensics agents stuck his head out of 705 and called in a shout-whisper up the hall, “Agent Templeton?”

  His tone sounded sufficiently alarmed that Naomi hustled back to the crime scene, vowing to get a full debrief from the cops later. The din of clamoring voices inside 705 rose as she neared. She came into the room to find a man in a suit plucking the photographs off the wall.

  “Who the hell is he?” she said. “Who are you?”

  The man turned around, sliding the photos into a manila folder. It took a moment for Naomi to place the round boyish face here, out of context.

  Douglas Wetzel, the deputy chief of staff.

  With curly chestnut hair a touch longer than D.C. standard, a full but neatly trimmed beard, and a suit priced well beyond the range of his salary, he looked like a trust-fund hipster conforming reluctantly to professional expectations.

  She knew better than to take the laid-back adornments at face value. Wetzel was President Bennett’s hatchet man, a political pit bull through and through.

  As Wetzel clasped the folder to his chest and started out, Naomi stepped to intercept him. He was around her age, early thirties, and thick—a big-boned guy with some extra padding. She remembered reading somewhere that in order to match Bennett’s schedule he functioned on three hours of sleep, snatched at intervals throughout the day. His entire existence was designed to remain at the president’s beck and call 24/7.

  “I’m Special Agent in Charge—”

  “Templeton,” Wetzel said. “We’re aware.”

  “What’s the president’s deputy chief of staff doing at my crime scene?”

  “Invoking executive privilege.”

  “You’re tampering with evidence in an active investigation—”

  “I was told it had been processed.”

  “—and last I checked, you weren’t the commander-in-chief.”

  “I’m acting on the president’s authority. He needs this contained.”

  “The president’s safety comes first,” she said. “Containment second.”

  Wetzel moved to step around her, and she moved as well, keeping her body between him and the door. He glared at her, and she held his stare. A number of her agents sidled up behind her casually, pretending to aim their focus elsewhere.

  Wetzel’s glare snapped off, replaced with a smile that showed little amusement. “It’s okay,” he said, taking a step back. “You’re new. You don’t understand how this works yet.”

  As he pulled out his phone and dialed, Naomi cast a glance over at the sniper rifle and the left-behind tape on the wall. A tableau staged to send a message.

  Wetzel’s appearance made clear who X had intended the message for.

  Wetzel muttered into the phone and then looked up at Naomi. “He wants you in his office now.”

  Naomi felt herself flush. “Director Gonzalez?”

  Wetzel extended the phone, and she took it, pressed it to her ear in time to hear an all-too-familiar voice say, “No. The president.”

  7

  First Domino to Fall

  Evan had taken the southwest corner penthouse suite at the Hay-Adams. The hotel was suitable for a number of reasons. The building itself, a venerable Italian Renaissance–style beauty, had pleasing architectural flourishes, from walnut wainscoting to Elizabethan ceiling treatments. The service was superb—old-fashioned and discreet. Its 145 rooms provided relative anonymity.

  And it had a superb view of the White House.

  Sitting at his picture window, snacking on Virginia poached oysters bedded with cauliflower mousse, caviar, and a touch of yuzu, Evan let his Steiner tactical binoculars scan across Lafayette Square once more and lensed in on the northwest gate, the first point of entry to the West Wing. He’d been down in the park yesterday in an appropriated Parks and Recreation uniform, moving among the stalwart protesters and strategically trimming branches to clear the sight lines.

  Despite the advent of dusk, he maintained a perfect view of the guardhouse now, the range-finding binocs designed for low-light conditions. A cable ran from the binoculars to his laptop, feeding it a steady stream of data.

  He paused to slurp another oyster and took a sip of mint tea.

  It was a civilized way to conduct an assassination.

  Down at the gate, a woman in a royal-blue pantsuit hit a buzzer and spoke to a uniformed agent through the bulletproof glass. She gestured with annoyance, waving a yellow pass, but was turned away.

  As she stomp-hobbled away in blocky high heels, Evan regarded his laptop, which mapped the woman’s facial features, identifying her as a congresswoman from Florida’s sixth district.

  Another oyster. More tea.

  He could get used to this.

  The overhead vent wafted a cool current across his shoulders. The air was perfumed with French-milled soap from the bathroom. He was shirtless, an Egyptian cotton towel still wrapped around his waist from the shower; he hadn’t bothered to get dressed.

  Today Evan had announced himself to President Bennett. The rifle was the make and model Evan had used for his first assassi
nation in 1997, the mission that—for whatever reason—Bennett was trying to eliminate any trace of all these years later. The photos Evan had taped on the wall were a few of the Orphans murdered at Bennett’s command. Those men were no longer invisible, unseen and unmourned, but displayed as proudly as the stars carved into the white Alabama marble of the Memorial Wall at Langley.

  And Jack.

  Jack’s face had been taped up in Apartment 705 as well, watching as Evan made his preparations, setting up the rifle, etching the round, parting the curtains to allow that first domino to fall.

  For the past forty-five minutes, Evan had been set up here on the one-armed chaise longue of his hotel suite, waiting to see who Bennett would summon to handle the investigation. So far all Evan had captured in the lenses was a parade of White House workers and the occasional politician. He was hoping for a sign of Eddie Gonzalez, the Secret Service director, and whichever deputy assistant director he’d bring with him to run point on the investigation. Evan had figured that President Bennett would want to oversee the matter in person but, given the delay, he was beginning to think that Bennett might handle it over the phone.

  A Jeep Wrangler parked beyond the gate, and a woman emerged. Tough-pretty, athletic build, her blond hair artlessly cut. No makeup, no jewelry. She was dressed nicely—dark jeans, white button-up, black fitted blazer—but not too nicely, as an aide or politician would be.

  Promising.

  The Steiners were a great set of glass, crisp up to a mile, refined enough that Evan could see the pierce holes in the woman’s ears. As she reached the guardhouse, he screen-captured her on the laptop and ran facial recognition.

  Naomi Jean Templeton, special agent in charge, Protective Intelligence and Assessment.

  Evan pulled up her record from the databases and scanned it.

  She was a pay grade below the agents Evan had been anticipating, and newly promoted at that.

  Bennett would think she was malleable, controllable.

  There was nothing the president valued more than control.

  Evan adjusted the focus and watched the agent in the guardhouse tapping on his computer, a hardline telephone shrugged to one ear.

  Naomi Templeton waited, penned in, the outer fence closed behind her, the inner fence not yet open. The guard gestured, and she placed her credentials in the pass-through tray. He examined them and sent them back.

  The inner fence rolled smoothly open, releasing her from the sally-port pen, and she started for the West Wing.

  A marine sentry guarded the entrance, motionless as a carving, his spit-polished shoes throwing a gleam even at this distance, even in this light. As she neared, he pivoted with automated grace, held the door for her with a white glove. His spine was a steel rod.

  Evan watched Naomi disappear inside.

  At last he rose and let the towel fall away. He’d made the opening gambit. It was time to formulate the next move.

  8

  Presidential Shit Management

  The air in the Oval Office tasted of velvet. Perhaps it was the purity afforded by the filters, or perhaps it was just the flavor of the rich furnishings, of history itself. Naomi never got used to it. She’d been here three previous times with her father, all when she was small enough that he’d carried her in.

  This was the first time she was here under her own power.

  As she entered, President Bennett waited on one of the couches, his legs crossed. His eyes moved, but the rest of him didn’t, a haunted-house-portrait effect. They tracked her progress in.

  “Mr. President.”

  The rest of him became animated. Slightly. “Agent Templeton.”

  Somewhere behind Naomi, she heard the assistant secretary withdraw, the panel door suctioning shut, locking them in with an emphasis that called to mind the securing of an airplane cabin. The air hummed with silence, a vacuum-sealed effect.

  Bennett’s wire-frame eyeglasses conveyed a certain loftiness while adding a protective layer between himself and the world, augmenting his inscrutability.

  “Why don’t you sit,” he said.

  Not a question.

  She looked at the scattering of chairs and couches, realized that choosing her spot was a test of sorts. She took the couch directly opposite him, an assertive selection. Then she made full eye contact, though it was uncomfortable. He’d left the curtains at his back precisely parted to throw a slice of light into her face if she picked that seat.

  He said, “I heard you’re not acceding to my wishes.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. President—”

  “Is that phrase ever followed with due respect, Templeton?”

  She pursed her lips. Recalled what her father used to say: Ultimately a Secret Service agent is a babysitter. He just happens to be babysitting the most powerful person in the world.

  A memory flash kicked her in the gut—her father standing right there backlit on the carpet, broad-shouldered and stolid, and her reaching up to hold his hand.

  Two hours ago, when she’d left him at the hospital, he’d been asleep, a bony fist clutching the top of the blankets, the downward slash of his mouth gapped with exhaustion.

  She gathered herself, squared her own shoulders now. “Okay, Mr. President. Shall we get straight to it, then?”

  “I’d appreciate that. I’m told my time is valuable.”

  She cleared her throat and smoothed down the fabric of her pant leg, immediately annoyed at this release of nervous energy, especially given Bennett’s motionless perch on the couch. He radiated latent power and menace, a coiled snake.

  “My job isn’t to accede to your wishes,” she said. “It’s to keep you safe. If you interfere with my investigation, I can’t do that. I’d rather have you displeased with me and alive than happy and dead.”

  He studied her for a moment. Then he smiled faintly. After the stone-faced commencement of their conversation, it felt like a full-body hug. She realized that this was a practiced technique, that he was conditioning her to react favorably to minor displays of reinforcement. She was a rat, and he controlled the rewards she’d receive if she pawed the right levers.

  “My shit,” President Bennett said.

  Her throat had gone dry, but she resisted clearing it. “Excuse me?”

  “When I travel abroad, a special portable toilet is flown with me. My feces and urine are captured and flown back to be disposed of here.”

  He was studying her closely, gauging her reaction to the unusual tack. This was also a test—with Bennett everything was a test—and her reaction would determine her fate.

  She went for unflappable. “And?”

  “Do you know why that is?”

  At last, familiar ground. Presidential shit-management tales were among her dad’s favorite anecdotes.

  “So foreign intelligence can’t capture it in specimen canisters and have it analyzed to determine what medical conditions you might have,” she said, striking a tone that bordered on disinterested. “We did it to Gorbachev in the late eighties. The Mossad did it to President Assad when he traveled to Jordan for King Hussein’s funeral.”

  The president leaned forward on the couch, the slight movement as impactful as if he’d leapt to his feet. “My waste is a national-security issue. I was the undersecretary of defense for policy at the DoD for two administrations and the secretary for a third. I’ve sat behind the Resolute desk”—at this, a hand flicked to indicate the wooden behemoth pinning down the oval carpet—“for five years now. Do you really think I need you to explain my own safety to me?”

  Naomi said, “Evidently.”

  It was a big gamble, and during the ensuing silence she envisioned herself clearing out her desk at headquarters, working security for a jewelry shop in Falls Church.

  He absorbed this without reaction. When it was clear that no response was forthcoming, she said, “Your job is to run the world. My job is to cover your blind spots in one specific arena. That’s all I do and all I’m here for. Will you let
me do that for you?”

  His snake eyes glittered, flat and impenetrable. He was still sizing her up, determining whether she was an asset or something worth eating.

  “You catch a lot of flak being a female agent?” he asked.

  “My SIG P229 shoots the same regardless of my anatomy.”

  “That sounds like a well-rehearsed line.”

  “It’s a tired question, Mr. President,” she said, then added, “with all due respect.”

  A hint of a smile teased the corners of his mouth but faded before it could get up steam. “Let’s try this one, then. You catch a lot of flak for your last name?”

  She hesitated, saw that he saw it. It was like opening a tiny window into her soul. She packed down her regret, slammed the window shut. But it was too late. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Okay. Then let me ask you the generic question you’ve been answering since you stepped off the graduation dais at FLETC. Would you take a bullet?” His index finger jabbed into his chest, left side, slightly off the midline. “For me?”

  “That’s not my job,” she said. “My job is to keep that bullet from ever being fired. If it comes down to me having to play target dummy, I’ve already failed”—she caught herself—“Mr. President.”

  He must have been breathing, though she could discern no rise and fall of his chest, no flare of his nostrils, no parting of his lips. Just the stare.

  The discomfort of waiting grew until it became physical, expanding in her torso. She went on offense. “You mentioned that your time was valuable,” she said. “I’m gonna take you at your word. Which means I’d like to discuss the investigation.”

  No nod, which she took as an invitation to continue.

  “Everything about what we uncovered in that apartment is concerning to me,” she said. “Not just the extent of the planning but the presentation of specifics. I believe your would-be assassin was speaking to you. And I believe you received the message.”

  Something shifted in Bennett’s expression, a loosening of the mask, and she saw that her words had turned a key in him. His locked-down posture eased, finally allowing a bit of slack in his muscles. He gave a faint nod.